The Sacrifice of Isaac, Franz Anton Maulbertsch

To Your Correspondent, it’s one of the most inexplicable passages in the Old Testament.  In order to assure himself of Abraham’s devotion, God orders him to kill his son, Isaac.  And … Abraham agrees. 

In Genesis 22, you will find the tale of how God had Abraham take Isaac up to the land of Moriah (a great distance away), separate the boy from the bearers and others that travelled with them, and then had the poor boy cut and carry wood for his own sacrifice.

Abraham readies the alter and wood, only to then bind Isaac and place him upon the pyre.  He is about to stab the boy to fulfill God’s command when God sends an angel to stop him.  God provides a ram, stuck in the nearby bushes, as a substitute, and one assumes that they went home, with Isaac never to turn his back on his father or trust him again for an instant.

It is stories like this that make Your Correspondent, a product of 13 years of private Catholic schooling, wonder if anyone reads this stuff critically.  The Biblical point here is that Abraham, after luring his son away from witnesses and making the poor boy carry the wood for his own funeral pyre, is viewed heroically because he valued God’s word more than he did the life of his own son.  The religious reading of the story puts a smiley face on an act of stupefying barbarism.  It’s an act of religious obligation counter to common sense, ethics and even fundamental morality.  This is the kind of thinking that leads to jihadism, suicide bombings, and the murder of abortion providers, much less countenancing child abuse.

We have looked at a number of brilliant depictions of this fable in the past, and to that list we must add that of Franz Anton Maulbertsch (1724-1796), currently in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary.

Looking at Maulbertsch’s work, one marvels at his ability to tell a story vertically.  For much of his work, the story sweeps up and down, rather than across.  Maulbertsch packs a great deal of drama in this picture, mostly communicated through composition and coloration.  Indeed, though Maulbertsch was a capable painter, his true genius lie in color and composition.  Weaknesses in drawing and painting are more than compensated for by his use of both to drive the narrative.  He has an artistic point of view – something that some more technically skilled painters lack, leaving their work sterile or unmoving.

The painting swoops from lower left (the angel’s wings and Isaac’s wonderfully lit legs), though the body of the boy and leading up to Abraham’s face, the light reflected on his helmet, and his upraised knife.  In that bottom to top arc, we have the entire story of the near sacrifice, told with impressive narrative thrust and significant drama.

No one would accuse Maulbertsch of delicacy when rendering the human face; indeed, many of his faces are indistinct or only adequately drawn.  Look, however, at Abraham’s face, which is very striking indeed.  Shown only in half light, this is the look of religious mania at its worst – the satisfaction evident on his face is consistent with people who have gone blood simple, and relish the act of murder.

Another reading is, of course, that Abraham’s face is lustful.  Time and again in depictions of Abraham and Isaac from artists as diverse as Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Titian, we have seen something in the myth that seems to inspire dark contemplations of parental abuse, sexual and otherwise.  All of these painters have fetishized Isaac to some degree, and Maulbertsch is no different.  Note the radiant, heavenly light specifically highlighting his muscular legs and flat stomach, focusing its spotlight on his private parts.  Discreetly covered by the torn fragments of his robe, there is no mistaking that the focal point of the painting is Isaac’s groin. Indeed, if the eye flows up in a straight line, Abraham’s knife is directly over Isaac’s genitals.

Though rendered without “fussiness” or fine detail, Maulbertsch’s take on the Abraham/Isaac myth has an almost Mannerist monumentality and epic feel.  It is not my favorite painting of the myth, but it may be one of the most idiosyncratic.

The Taking of Christ, by Caravaggio (1602)

We are closing the week (and marking Good Friday) with this stunning picture by Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ, commissioned by nobleman Ciraco Mattei in 1602, and currently found in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

Born Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), Caravaggio was the original ‘bad boy’ of art.  His remarkable body of work, with its heightened drama and use of differing levels of dark paint, created the bridge between the High Renaissance and the Baroque school of painting.

There is a compelling quality of Caravaggio’s art that makes him entirely modern.  He took his models for saints and angels from the Italian streets; he was a painter of the people, dressing the most heightened figures of religious myth in the clothes of the everyday, so that the public would recognize themselves on a spiritual plane.

His intense focus on human interaction also isolates him from his High Renaissance brethren – never one to be fussy or painterly in his effects, he shines the hot light of focus on the interplay between dramatically lit figures and ignores backgrounds.

Caravaggio studied in Milan under a master who had trained with Titian.  He moved to Rome while still a young man in his 20s and quickly set up a reputation as a painter of considerable skill.  He also established his reputation as a wild man – drinking, brawling and having a string of affairs with young boys.  He killed a man in 1606 during an argument, and fled Rome with a price on his head.  He was involved in serious fights in 1608 and 1609 (in Malta and Naples, respectively), and died at 38 from a fever in Porto Ercole, near Grosseto in Tuscany, while on his way to Rome to receive a pardon.  (Even then, it paid to have friends in official places.)

The stunning The Taking of Christ presents seven figures: John, Jesus, Judas, three soldiers and Peter, holding a lantern (from left to right).  We cannot fully see their bodies, but clearly Judas has just kissed Jesus as a means to betray him to the soldiers.  As with much of Caravaggio's work, the background is dark and indistinct, drawing complete attention to the human drama.  Also, the light source is unclear – it would seem to come from the upper left, though the lantern light does not seem to be significant.  St. Peter holds the lamp; he also betrayed Christ, and spent the remainder of his life repenting and spreading his gospel to the world.

Let’s contrast the two figures at opposite ends of the painting.  St. Peter, holding the lamp, is said to be a self-portrait of Caravaggio.  The man running away (his cloak held by a restraining soldier) is said to be St. John.  If Peter is indeed a self-portrait of the artist, what is Caravaggio trying to tell us?  That he, a sinner (and what a sinner!), is better equipped to shed light on the divine than a saint?  That his clear vision is aligned with that of God Himself?

Equally striking is the stark, white light on the foreheads of Christ, Judas and Peter.   There are two lines on Christ’s brow, but the forehead of Judas is a network of lines.  Peter, in contrast, is nearly clear-browed.  Even in these little details, Caravaggio speaks to us from across the centuries.  The lines on Christ’s head clearly indicate suffering, or, perhaps, the full realization of the suffering to come.  The clear-head of St. Peter is clearly the clear-head of the artist; he sees and records, but does not necessarily judge.

But Judas – his forehead is a complex pattern of lines, befitting one of the most complex figures in New Testament mythology.  Judas is key to the story of Christ, because without the him, there is no crucifixion, and no resurrection.  There is an argument to be made that Judas was the most courageous of all the apostles, for he willingly took on the role of betrayer to ensure the death and resurrection of Christ, making the entire Christian tradition possible.  If that is the case, then Judas is indeed the most misunderstood figure in the Christian mythos.

Even more interesting, look at the hands in this picture.  The soldier restraining Christ wears a gauntlet and is invisible; the hands of the solider holding St. John’s cloak are in shadow (probably by Caravaggio using a glaze of burnt umber or some other transparent brown paint) – so we can eliminate those hands.  But, look at the hands of St. Peter, St. John, Judas and Christ.  Compositionally, good pictures ‘read,’ drawing the eye in a consistent pattern.  We follow Peter’s hand to John’s, down to the hand of Judas, and finally to those of Christ.  According to myth, Christ was praying when identified by Judas, and his clasped hands look as if they are already under police restraint.  Not only do these hands help the ‘flow’ of the viewer’s eye, but notice that the hands of Peter, John and Judas indicate one direction, while those of Christ indicate another.  This going against the tidal flow of humanity also helps underscore the look on pain on the face of Jesus.

Finally, let’s look at the dramatic, white-hot reflection off of the soldier’s armor that runs through the center of the picture.  The face of that solider is undefined in the picture, but the reflected bar of light is fully depicted.  There are some scholars who believe that Caravaggio’s intention is to replicate a mirror, and that those gazing at the solider should feel as if they are gazing into a mirror, seeing their own faces.  It is a compelling argument, as the biggest patch of reflection is dead-center in the picture.

Whatever the interpretation, though, this is a stunning picture rewarding prolonged examination.  There is something mysterious, uncanny even, in Caravaggio’s best work, and this picture is no exception.  I don’t think I have fully exhausted everything it has to say.

(More on Caravaggio’s works can be found on this blog on links to the right.)

Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane

There are probably more rumors and tall tales about Michelangelo Merisi or Amerighi da Caravaggio (1571 – 1610) than any other pre-modern artist.  Stories of his being everything from a highwayman and freebooter, to gay renegade and street fighter have made the rounds, and, really, after all this time, who can say for sure what story of his life is the truth?

Well … Andrew Graham-Dixon (born 1960) can.  In a book that took more than 10 years to write, Graham-Dixon was able to access criminal and city-records that had not been referenced before, and provide a more complete picture of this complex and brilliant painter than ever published before.

It is not an exaggeration to say in an age when brilliance was commonplace, Caravaggio changed the way people think of genius.  Born some 50 years after his namesake Michelangelo, Caravaggio came of age when the high ideals and artistic techniques of the High Renaissance had become stilted and ossified.  Bucking a near 100-year trend, Caravaggio sought not to move art forward, but to move it back to a more medieval ideal.  His goal was the meld the simple piety and poverty so closely aligned with the Middle Ages to the artistic techniques of chiaroscuro and perspective achieved in the Renaissance. 

Caravaggio painted not for the collector, but for the peasant.  His holy figures were visibly poor: weighted down by life and care, often barefoot and dirty, experiencing religious transcendence in usually grungy environments.  Paradoxically, the public by-and-large did not know what to make of his work, and it seemed to appeal best to such cultured aesthetes as Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1577 – 1633), nephew of the Pope and noted art collector.

What kind of man was Caravaggio?  Well, as an artist, no one could touch him.  As a human being, no one wanted to touch him.  Though roughly born, he had pretentions to the purple – this left him so prideful that he resorted to fists, knives or swords if he thought his pride was insulted.  His adolescent studio-aide was probably his lover, and Caravaggio seems to have abandoned the moment it was convenient for him; finally he murdered a man in a duel, probably involving prostitutes.  He fawned before the great and powerful, and often repaid them with bad behavior, and he spent enough time in prison to qualify as a rock star.

But… well, yes… but.  Caravaggio’s pictures are unlike any other painted in his era.  His figures are often in dramatic close-up, the light source unknown.  And where most Baroque painters reveled in brilliant coloration and fantastic scenes of heavenly beauty, Caravaggio’s palette consisted mostly of earth-tones and his saints were very earth-bound indeed.  What Caravaggio had that many artists of his era did not have was a true sense of Catholic suffering and an almost primal religious ecstasy.  That this ecstasy was so closely associated, in his mind and in his work, with pain is one of the many things that make his work touch the mystery of religion.

In short, Caravaggio’s sensibility was both “sacred and profane.”  As chronicled by Grahman-Dixon, Caravaggio’s life was always balanced between acts of brutality and ugliness and the creation of deeply felt art.  Critic and historian Robert Hughes (1938-2012) has called Graham-Dixon “the most gifted art critic of his generation,” and this book alone would be enough to cement that reputation.

The historical research on view here is remarkable; but not more so than Graham-Dixon’s work in making it accessible and sensible to the modern reader.  Moreover, he parts company with contemporary critics who seek to align Caravaggio to more modern sensibilities by underscoring how completely alien to our frame of reference Caravaggio’s historical moment actually was.  Finally, he is not afraid to use deductive reasoning to connect recently unearthed facts to make a case for the most probable sequence of events of several of the most significant moments in the artist’s life, including the murderous duel that marked his downfall.

More importantly, few writers look at, and understand, pictures better than Graham-Dixon.  His explanations and explications of Caravaggio’s oeuvre are masterful.  If you are to read only one book about this fascinating, divisive and strangely contemporary painter, make is Andrew Grahman-Dixon’s Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane.

Johann Friedrich Overbeck: Doubting Thomas (1851)

We continue our look at Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789 – 1869), leader of the Nazarene Movement which sought to return art to its more Christian, early Renaissance roots.

Fate was kind to Overbeck after his arrival in Rome.  The Prussian consul, Jakob Salomon Bartholdy, commissioned Overbeck and fellow Nazarenes Peter von Cornelius, Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow and Philipp Veit to create a fresco telling the story Joseph and his Brethren for his home, the Palazzo Zuccari.  This led to commissions from Prince Massimo for frescos illustrating Tasso, Dante and Aristotle.  Perhaps this commission did not reflect his High Christian ideals, as he worked on this for 10 years before passing the task onto his friend, painter Joseph von Führich.  Overbeck would then turn to a subject perhaps closer to his heart, the Vision of St. Francis, for the Porziuncola in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli near Assisi.  Rome would remain his artistic and spiritual home until his death in 1869.

Doubting Thomas (or The Incredulity of St. Thomas), painted in 1851, amply displays all the strengths and weaknesses of Overbeck’s work.  The picture is based on the Biblical account of Thomas the Apostle who, when confronted by the resurrected Jesus, insisted on touching His wounds in order to believe it was truly He.  (Hence the common parlance “Doubting Thomas.”)  Once he stuck his finger into Jesus’ wound, he professed his faith – becoming Thomas the Believer.  Jesus says, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”  (The negative effect unquestioning faith has had on humankind is incalculable – but that is a subject for a different blog.)

Overbeck frames the central images of Christ and Thomas with a wonderful circular window, further enhancing the centrality of the images with the natural light of the sky.  The tiled floor and framed central figures call to mind such early Renaissance masters as Masaccio (1401 – 1428), an artist linking the Gothic and Renaissance traditions.

All the figures seem too posed for any sense of naturalism, such as Christ’s upraised arm allowing Thomas to touch the wound while bestowing what looks like a blessing at the same time.  This Christ is also much younger and more approachable than the rather patrician Jesus of Christ in the House of Mary and Martha.  The distribution of weight on both of His legs also seems reminiscent of classical statuary – something which certainly would not have been Overbeck’s wish.

Though certainly a ‘good’ painting, again I cannot help but wonder at what Overbeck was seeking to toss aside.  Below is a painting of The Incredulity of St. Thomas by a late Renaissance master, Caravaggio (1571-1610).  It is by any yardstick a magnificent painting – and more human in scope and feel than that of Overbeck.  More importantly, Christ and his disciples are in no way diminished by the blatant humanity of the piece.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Thomas is a real human figure lined by care, and the wound in Christ’s chest is certainly a horrific reminder of His ordeal.  Granted the different styles, aesthetics and eras of both artists, but why would Overbeck believe a less sophisticated approach to his art equaled deepened religious conviction?  It is a question similar to those of today, who think religious devotion equals a distrust of science and a renunciation of the modern world – a world which, to the dismay of some, continues to spin.

Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard Part IV: Don Juan and the Statue of the Commander

I had thought of ending the week with another example of the Neoclassicism of Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard (1780-1850), but when I came upon this, I could not resist.

My readers are doubtless familiar with the story of Don Juan, the well-known libertine.  There are countless versions of the story, from Moliere and Corneille to Mozart and Byron.  The painter Eugene Delacroix (1798 – 1863) was particularly taken with Mozart’s opera, writing “What a masterpiece of romanticism!  And that in 1785!  … the entry of the specter will always strike a man of imagination.”

Delacroix was writing of the finale, where the ghost of one of the Don’s victims comes to escort the libertine to hell.  This picture looks so unlike most of Alexandre-Évariste’s oeuvre that I cannot but help but think it had some special significance for the artist.  It’s a little picture, no more than 16x13, and hardly on the scale of his deliberately executed Neoclassical masterpieces.  The brush strokes are clearly visible, and it is painted with a loose vitality that has more in common with the Impressionism that was still decades away than the Neoclassical ideal it would eventually shun.

Don Juan here is clearly heroic: with his athletic stance, burning torch and pointed beard and mustaches, he looks more like a figure from a swashbuckling novel than a dissipated roué.  His torch illuminates two ghostly female figures … other victims, or fellow neighbors in hell?  In most of the artist’s pictures, the figure of the Commander would be depicted in finicky detail, each chink and join of armor would be visible, along with showy touches, such as light reflected upon the metal.  Not here – the ghostly figure is suggested by some thickly painted brush strokes, the face no more than a few well-placed shadows. 

That this moment in the Don Juan story held some kind of import for Alexandre-Évariste is evident – he painted it more than once.  Why, I wonder?  It does not take an armchair Freud to see that the Commander is clearly a father figure.  Did Alexandre-Évariste have regrets about the way he treated his father?  Not only did he burn Papa Fragonard’s drawings, but he seems to have sat idly by while the old man was destitute (living by the good graces of another Neoclassicist, David.)  I can’t help but think that this picture is clearly tied to the artist’s psyche.  He paints Don Juan handsome and athletic – certainly the way that most of us see ourselves, despite what our mirrors tell us.  But this heroic figure is still undone by the physical, patriarchal figure of his past sins.  It does not seem to stretch the imagination too much to think that the events may be operatic, but the thoughts are autobiographical. 

If the picture was prophetic – that there is a hell and poor Alexandre-Évariste is indeed roasting marshmallows with other artistic villains like Cellini and Caravaggio – one can hope that he still has access to paint and canvas.  Work like this would merit a trip to the lower regions, if only for a visit.

Titian’s Abraham and Isaac

Like the earlier David and Goliath we examined by Titian, this representation of Abraham and Isaac is now in the church of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice. It was originally made as a ceiling painting for the Santo Spirito in Isola; Titian’s other ceiling painting for that church depicted Cain and Abel.  (If the composition and foreshortening seems “funny,” remember this would ideally be seen from below.)

Titian was born Tiziano Vecellio in Pieve di Cardore in 1489 (dying in 1576, quite an old man by Renaissance standards).  He was perhaps the greatest Venetian painter of his era; his contemporaries called him The Sun Amidst Small Stars (after the final line of Dante’s Paradiso).  Titian was equally at home with landscapes, portraits and large narrative pictures.  Despite his compositional felicity and superior draughtsmanship it is perhaps is his unique mastery of color upon which his reputation rests.  His style changed often throughout his lifetime, but his serious study and application of color was a constant throughout his career.  His later works were, perhaps, muted compared to his earlier pictures, but his overall approach also grew in subtlety.

By any yardstick, this is a remarkable picture.  The painting is characterized by the spiraling movement of the figures, the counterpoised pose and the strong intersecting diagonals.  Like Caravaggio and Rembrandt, Titian chooses the moment when the angel appears just before Abraham can murder his son in an act of devotion to God.  But it would be hard to imagine a painting more unlike the other two – let’s start by looking at his characterization.

If Caravaggio’s Abraham is an unthinking zealot and Rembrandt’s a confused duffer, Titian’s muscled prophet seems to our eyes more like Samson or Hercules.  Though he holds Isaac’s head down (like Rembrandt), this sword thrust would most likely cleave Isaac’s head from his body.  (And note, too, that this is no simple knife – it is a sword.  This Abraham is a figure of potency, indeed.)

The angel here is unlike the celestial interlopers of Caravaggio (who seems oddly human) and Rembrandt (who is definitely otherworldly) – this angel is more in line with the putti seen decorating various religious paintings of the period.  That so simple and childlike an angel can stop so massive a human seems incredible; however, the face of Titian’s angel seems to us the most urgent of the three.  This angel will stop this madness, regardless of his relative size.

Which brings us, as is almost always the case in this story, to the artist’s depiction of Isaac.  Caravaggio showed us an adolescent clearly terrified and abused; Rembrandt a heavenly youth of beautiful whiteness, his face brutally hidden by his father’s massive fist.  The Isaac of Lievens is clearly conflicted, unable to see the angel above him and clearly uncomfortable in his father’s grasp.  But Titian’s Isaac is different – this is no adolescent, it is a young boy.  And despite straddling a funeral pyre, with his father holding his head and face away, he seems curiously nonplussed.  This Isaac is too innocent of his father’s intention, too young to fully appreciate that he is about to die, and that makes the scene doubly horrible.  (Indeed, his face is eerily similar to that of the ass and the lamb, all of them, to Abraham, little better than dumb animals.  Note that the older man seems to stand on one and put his full weight on the other.)

Note, too, that, like Caravaggio and Rembrandt, here Isaac seems to be lit from another source.  Caravaggio’s Isaac is horribly white – perhaps in terror, perhaps rendered so by the artist in a mode of self-identification.  Rembrandt’s Isaac looks as if a hot spotlight lit his youthful lines, focusing the picture on his boyish innocence.  Titian, however, aligns the light of heaven alongside his Isaac – the clouds are highlighted with white, heavenly light, throwing Isaac’s simple robe into stark outlines.

Interesting, too, and again like Caravaggio and Rembrandt, Titian cannot help but fetishize Isaac.  The most luminous focal point of the picture is Isaac’s bottom, and it can not be unintentional.  There is something in this myth that seems to inspire in even the most devout of souls dark contemplations of parental abuse, sexual and otherwise.

Though this is bound to raise hackles, to my eye Titian’s picture is far superior to that of Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Lievens.  Possibly because of its intended use as a ceiling picture, the composition is more dynamic, more energetic and more frenetic than the other pictures we’ve looked at in this series.  (Note the train of Abraham’s robe trailing behind him.)  Titian was also a draughtsmam of prodigious ability: the rich musculature of Abraham and the soft lines of both Isaac and the angel are wonderfully captured, and the triangular quality of the composition keeps the eye going from victim to angel with zealot locked between them.

Also, Titian’s sense of color cuts through the haze of sanctity that usually envelops the story, making more clear and more terrible just what was about to happen here.

The Angel Prevents the Sacrifice of Isaac by Rembrandt van Rijn (c. 1635)

Yesterday we looked at how Dutch artist Jan Lievens envisioned the Biblical story of God’s edict to Abraham to murder his own son, Isaac, as a sign of his devotion.  Lievens was a contemporary (and sometime studio partner) of Rembrandt van Rijn, who also painted his own version of the story.  Unlike Lievens, who painted the scene after Abraham spared Isaac and killed a ram instead, Rembrandt, like Caravaggio before him, chose the more dramatic moment of the story when the angel appears and stops Abraham in his murderous intent.

Rembrandt (1606 – 1669), of course, is one of the world’s most famous and celebrated painters.  His is one of the few names (like Leonardo and Michelangelo) that have become shorthand for “artist.”  His revolutionary use of light and color, in addition to the sensitivity with which he portrayed the human condition, were combined with a supreme sense of composition and narrative.  He is truly one of the great masters.

Rembrandt was born into a middle class family; he showed an early aptitude for art and studied first with Jacob van Swanenburgh, and later (alongside Jan Lievens) with Pieter Lastman.  Lastman was deeply impressed by Caravaggio’s use of light and color, and it’s probable that Lastman held up the Italian Renaissance master as a model to his students.  (Caravaggio himself painted a deeply disturbing version of the Abraham and Isaac story.)

Rembrandt became one of history’s most celebrated portrait painters.  He married Saskia van Uylenburg in 1634 and her father, an art dealer, was able to secure a great deal of work for his son-in-law.  The couple lived and worked in the Breestraat, a busy street on the boarder of the Jewish neighborhood.  Rembrandt studied many of the faces he saw there, and this study stood him in good stead for his masterful pictures depicting Old Testament figures.  Rembrandt created more than 300 Biblical works, including drawings and etchings. 

Despite his success, Rembrandt was never very competent when it came to financial affairs.  He lived way beyond his means, using much of his money to buy art and antiquities.  He sold much of his collection to avoid bankruptcy in 1656 including Roman busts, Japanese armor and his collections of minerals and gems.  The art establishment, always out to get him, represented by the painters guild actually created a rule that artists in Rembrandt’s financial position could not trade as painters.   Rembrandt was forced to move into a smaller house and he died in dire financial straits.

The Angel Prevents the Sacrifice of Isaac was painted around 1635 and, as is usually the case with Rembrandt, he finds the decisive, dramatic moment of the story to illustrate with his brush.

Rembrandt was much the same age as Lievens when he painted his version of Abraham and Isaac.  And though both men are great masters in their own right, I think that the Rembrandt is by far the superior picture of the two.  Both artists focus on Isaac, but where Lievens pinpoints the ambiguity of the boy’s emotions, Rembrandt details his lily white youth and supple boyhood.  Indeed, the bleached white of Isaac’s torso shows that the heavenly light is not on Abraham, but on Isaac.

Nor is Isaac any willing murder victim; like Caravaggio’s possible self-portrait in the same role, this is an Isaac who is clearly being abused by his father.  Abraham’s hand covers the boy’s face and mouth – he cannot cry out, nor can he breathe.  His hands are tied behind his back, but his body and legs twist and squirm in terror. 

It is curious, too, that Rembrandt’s Isaac, like Caravaggio’s, is nude or mostly nude.  This curious fetishizing of Isaac links the work of these two masters, and will also be in evidence tomorrow when we look at Titian.

Where Caravaggio paints Abraham as an emotional blank, though, Rembrandt creates a very different picture of the prophet.  Here, Abraham is clearly a confused old duffer, dropping his knife in surprise at the arrival of the angel.  There is no sense of purpose, as with Caravaggio, or perhaps continued malign intent, as with Lievens, but, rather, simply infirmity and, possibly, dementia.  One wonders how the old man managed to subdue the boy in the first place.

Also interesting is the angel.  It appears here that the angel arrives in the proverbial nick of time – and the look on its face seems to indicate more than a touch of disapproval of the entire incident.  (What, it seems to ask, are you crazy…?)

I would draw your attention to the hands of both Abraham and the angel – they seem, to me, curiously deliberate.  The hand smothering Isaac is quite massive, and the hand that held the knife seems quite powerful indeed – hardly the hands belonging to so old a man as Abraham.  The angel’s hand clutching Abraham’s wrist also seems powerfully delineated, with dark patches between fingers, while the hand heavenward seems curiously feminine and small. 

As is often the case with this story, one wonders what happens once the angel drifts heavenward.  Isaac is already tied and lying on what would be his funeral pyre.  The ram that will be killed in his stead is nowhere in evidence – so we have to ask, how does one move from this moment of supreme drama and religious mania back to normalcy?

Abraham and Isaac by Jan Lievens (c. 1637)

Yesterday we looked at how Caravaggio depicted the dramatic moment in Genesis 22 when Abraham is about to murder Isaac at God’s command, and how he is stopped in his bloody work by an angel.  Today, we travel north to see how artist Jan Lievens envisioned the immediate aftermath of the story.

As Genesis 22 reads: And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.

Jan Lievens (1607 – 1674) was a celebrated North-Netherlandish painter and etcher. He is often compared to his friend and colleague Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), and both artists were the pupils of Dutch painter and teacher Pieter Lastman.  (Lievens and Rembrandt would share a studio for some five years, and some scholars had trouble attributing work between the two artists.)  Lievens was a child prodigy, and he left his humble origins when he was 10 years old (his father was a tapestry worker) to train with Joris Verschoten.  Lievens was only 12 years old when he began his career as an artist (!) and, like Mozart, was celebrated for both his talent and his preciosity.

One of Lievens’ paintings found its way into the hands of James I, who invited Lievens (who was then 31) to become a painter to the English court.  After that, Lievens knocked about the European art world, working in Antwrep, acting as court painter in The Hague and Berlin, and later returning to Amsterdam in 1655.  He met with great success throughout his life, but in 1672, after the Rapjaar (the “disaster year” that found the country ravaged by war and internal strife), Lievens was nearly destitute.  Despite once having a considerable fortune, his family found that there was no inheritance to be had.

This picture, painted around the time Lievens was 30 years old, shows Abraham holding Isaac immediately after sacrificing the ram.  Lievens was living in Antwerp when he painted this canvas, and it is possible that the years he spent in London with Anthony van Dyck (1599 – 1641) influenced his coloration and brushwork. 

Where Caravaggio perhaps saw nothing but zealotry and madness in the situation of Abraham and Isaac, Lievens enigmatically captures something of the (necessarily) conflicting emotions of Issac.

The bloody carcass of the ram lies in the foreground, along with the knife almost used to end Isaac’s life.  The sacrificial pyre is lit and, in contrast to Caravaggio, there are no houses or sign of people in the distance, only a sky heavy with dramatic heavenly portent.  Where Caravaggio provides Abraham with the bland and placid visage of a zealot “just following orders,” Lievens portrays a web of complex emotions on the old prophet’s face.  As Abraham looks up – one cannot help but ask is Abraham thinking, thank you Lord for saving my son or is he thinking are you sure you don’t want me to do this?  Look at the arm that embraces Isaac – one cannot be terribly sure if that is the clutch of affection, or the vice-like grip of someone reluctant to let his victim go.  The right hand, too, wraps around the boy’s shoulder – in that hold, Isaac is not going anywhere.  (And it’s all fairly moot, as is implied by Abraham’s empty scabbard and spent knife – in this affair, at least, Abraham has been rendered impotent.)

Much more interesting, to my mind, if the face of Isaac.  Though looking heavenward in roughly the same direction as Abraham, is his the face of a child looking up into God’s majesty, or of a terrified boy in the clutch of a madman?  The ambiguity of Isaac’s face is hiding in plain sight:  where one might easily see a boy staring up at God, another might just as easily see a child looking for whatever it is his father is gazing at and missing it.

And that is leads to another question that is certainly implied here but never addressed in the Old Testament: how could Isaac ever again trust Abraham?

Caravaggio's Abraham and Isaac (1603)

It is surely one of the strangest passages in the Bible.  God tells Abraham, one of the most devoted of servants, to sacrifice his own child, Isaac, as a test of his devotion.  As it says in Genesis 22:

And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.

And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.

Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.

And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.

And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.

And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.

And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.

And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.

And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son

Where to begin?  First off, Abraham does not attempt to sacrifice his son in a blind panic upon hearing the voice of God; instead, with premeditation and malice aforethought, he lures the boy to a secluded spot.  Divesting himself of his henchmen, he willfully takes his own unsuspecting son away from witnesses before murdering him with a knife and burning his body.  (He even makes the poor blighter carry the wood to be used for his funeral pyre!)  Fewer acts of religious mania found in the Bible are more unsettling than this, not the least because the interpretation is that Abraham is somehow virtuous in his fidelity to the letter of God’s law.  The rosy patina that covers this incident is the result of thousands of years of religious compliance and our hesitancy to view the Bible critically.  Surely had Abraham lived in 2012, as opposed to some undetermined time before Christ, he would be scooted off to some well-padded giggle room where he could not hurt himself nor his children. 

And what would our thoughts of Abraham (and God, for that matter) be if he was successful in his murderous intent?  And how would we credit this story is God asked a mother to murder her daughter?

We have in the past looked at the work of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571 – 18 July 1610), the original “bad boy” of Italian Renaissance art.  Despite a wayward career -- regularly punctuated by bad behavior, crime and any and all manner of vice -- Caravaggio was capable of illustrating the human condition with a deep, if somber, sensitivity.  It is not just his dramatic and cinematic use of light that is arresting, but the emotion – and the often high cost of emotion – etched on the faces of his subjects that so mark his remarkable talent.

This 1603 depiction of the story of Abraham and Isaac was most likely commissioned by Cardinal Barberini, the future Pope Urban VIII.  His home, the Palazzo Barberini, today houses Italy's Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica (National Gallery of Ancient Art).  This magnificent museum will be featured in a later Jade Sphinx post.

Caravaggio responded to the story of Abraham and Isaac with his customary empathy and élan.   It is possible that the story moved Caravaggio more than we know, as there is a later 1605 painting that is possibly in his hand that depicts the same moment.  Caravaggio’s father died when the boy was six years old, and such premature leavings are often seen by children as acts of abandonment or punishment.

This painting is fully as fascinating as the Biblical myth which inspires it.  Note Abraham’s face – there is neither remorse nor pity in his countenance, simply determination.  As the angel excitedly countermands God’s order, Abraham simply looks like one awaiting further direction or confirmation.  He could be the poster-boy of a millennia of emotionally absent fathers.

The figuration placement is also remarkable.  Isaac, nude, is literally bent before his father, who brandishes an exceedingly phallic knife.  The intimation of violation, whether conscious or not, is striking and terrifying.  More interesting still, Isaac is not dissimilar in his features from scores of other Caravaggio self-portraits.

The angel is remarkable, as well.  His face is contorted in alarm – certainly not the expected visage of a heavenly visitor – and his wings are nearly outside the frame of the image.  In coloration, he is much like Abraham – warmly colored and human.  In terms of coloration and interaction, if nothing else, the zealot Abraham is more connected with the angel than Abraham and his own son.

Which brings us to Isaac – Caravaggio’s masterstroke of the picture.  The figure – his features, his coloration – is oddly reminiscent of Caravaggio’s self-portrait as the sick Bacchus.  Why is Isaac so pale, compared to Abraham and the angel (and the lamb, for that matter!).  The look of stark terror is impressive, but there also seems to be more than a touch of shame, and sense that the boy has been degraded as well as assaulted.  It is interesting to wonder how much – and why – Caravaggio may have identified with young Isaac.

The background is also suggestive – the houses in the distance tell the viewer that this is not only an occurrence remote from human proximity, but human intervention as well.  For a moment, Isaac is truly alone and most certainly damned.

What Do Artists Owe Us As Human Beings?

Michelangelo was a truly wretched person.  Smelly (literally), paranoid, argumentative, rude and money-mad, he was not the man who would become your beloved uncle.  Other painters who were not the nicest of men include (and this is just the cream of a very long list) the murderer Caravaggio, the murderer Wainewright, the absent husband-father Gaugin, the deranged Van Gough.  (In fact, recent inquiries indicate that perhaps it was Gaugin that slashed away Van Gough’s ear…)  Picasso was a philanderer and possible collaborator, and not the most generous of men, and Fra' Filippo Lippi broke his priestly vows and fathered a son (the mother was his model for the Virgin).  And so it goes.

Before too many composers start snickering at their paint-stained colleagues, there is the monstrously bullying anti-Semite Wagner and moody and unpleasant Beethoven.  Conductor Herbert von Karajan and pianist Ellie Ney were card-carrying Nazis.

Writers do not fare much better.  Ernest Hemmingway was a bully, drunkard and a wretched husband and father.  (There was a collective sigh of relief from all who knew him once he committed suicide.)  Coleridge and De Quincey were drug addicts.  Poe was a drunkard and snob.  Bernard Shaw was an early supporter of Mussolini and Pound favored Hitler. 

And need I remind you that President Abraham Lincoln was shot by … an actor?

Pop culture fares no better.  Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise are crackers to different degrees.  O.J. Simpson murdered his wife.  (Sue me, big fellah.)  L. Ron Hubbard managed to con several generations out of millions of dollars (now billions) with an invented religion.  (A business model which still attracts your correspondent…)  Rock stars are notorious for drug use, and rapp singers are equally famous for the rap sheets detailing their crimes.  (Rapp ‘music’ is indeed a remarkable cultural commodity – it is the first time in history that music was created largely by criminals for criminals.)  Mark Wahlberg started out as a cheap hood responsible for one crime victim losing an eye.  (At least he only had to see half of Walhberg’s movies…)

And what about the families of artists…?  Are they under scrutiny, too?  Harry Connick Sr., father of Sinatra simulacrum Harry Connick Jr., spent more than a decade willfully trying to execute a man his office knew was innocent.  Does that mean we should dislike Harry Jr. and his music?

However, it is important to remember that without the above we would not have the Sistine Ceiling, the Ring Cycle, The Sun Also Rises, The Rhime of the Ancient Mariner, The Raven, and Pygmalion among other masterpieces.

So if the question is, what do artists owe us as human beings, then the short answer is – nothing.  No artist owes the human community more (or less) than is required of any other human being.  Of course, it’s always delightful when one’s artistic heroes turn out to be big-hearted and generous of nature.  It’s nice to know that G. K. Chesterton was a lovely man or that Charles Dickens was warm and good natured, for instance.   But neither man was a saint – they were human beings, flawed and all the more interesting for it.

However, the real question is not whether or not artists owe humanity more or less than anyone else, but rather should they be treated (or considered) any differently?  And here the answer is short and unambiguous – no.

Artists may be above convention, but certainly never above the law.  Nor does an artist automatically get a pass simply because he is dedicated to making art.  Hemmingway was a wretched father and husband who happened to write several interesting novels – I’m not sure that the children he crippled emotionally were particularly enamored of his prose.  And I doubt that John Thompson, the man almost murdered by Connick, Sr. and his office, is going to a Harry Connick, Jr. concert anytime soon.  As an artist Michelangelo could not be touched – as a human being, no one wanted to touch him.  And measured by any yardstick other than aesthetic achievement Wagner was a vile and abominable human being.

But once we know of the (sometimes horrific) failings of artists, what is the proper reaction of people who regularly engage with the arts?  That is perhaps the most interesting and most key question.  For example, I have always been able to enjoy Wagner’s music, but I was born decades after the Holocaust and the anti-Semitism of fin de siècle Germany is not particularly relevant to my life.  However – I understand and appreciate the Wagner ban in Israel.

Michelangelo’s shortcomings as a person were so personal – and are now so distant – so to mean nothing to me as I contemplate his unparalleled artistic achievement.  None of Caravaggio’s crimes are evident to me on the canvas and Fra Lippi’s indiscretions now strike me as more amusing than sinful.  However, the very things that made Hemmingway a loathsome human being are there on the pages of his work for all to see: the posturing, the bullying, the macho-minded idiocy.  And I certainly have a harder time taking Shaw seriously as an intellectual when I see that he was beglamoured by an unlettered thug like Mussolini.

So, the cut-off point for the aesthete and the bad-boy (or bad-girl) artist must be purely a personal one.  Do we forgive them for their lives?  I am not prepared to say that art (and artists) are too removed from morality for this to be a valid question – it’s perhaps a primary question.  For myself, I’d never pay money for any work that would in some way fill the pockets of Gibson, Cruise, Walhberg or Connick – you may feel differently.

I would be interested to learn from my readers where they stand on this question.  Does the art erase the bad behavior of an artist?  And if so, why?

Caravaggio’s David and Goliath

We go from the sublime David of Michelangelo to the profoundly disturbing David and Goliath of Caravaggio.  Born Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), Caravaggio was the original ‘bad boy’ of art.  His remarkable body of work, with its heightened drama and use of differing levels of dark paint, created the bridge between the High Renaissance and the Baroque school of painting.

Caravaggio trained in Milan under a master who had trained with Titian.  He moved to Rome while still a young man in his 20s and quickly set up a reputation as a painter of considerable skill.  He also established his reputation as a wild man – drinking, brawling and having a string of affairs with young boys.  He killed a man in 1606 during an argument, and fled Rome with a price on his head.  He was involved in serious fights in 1608 and 1609 (in Malta and Naples, respectively), and died at 38 from a fever in Porto Ercole, near Grosseto in Tuscany, while on his way to Rome to receive a pardon.  This picture of David and Goliath was sent ahead of Caravaggio to Rome as a Papal offering prior to his pardon.

Let’s look at this remarkable picture.  If you look closely at the upper left hand of the canvas, you’ll see that David has just entered a tent, presumably the tent of Saul, to display the head of Goliath.  Notice that the sword is at an angle to David’s groin, another (perhaps unconscious) instance of the Renaissance mind eroticizing David.

It is reported that Caravaggio referred to the figure of the young David as “il suo Caravaggino” or, in English, “his little Caravaggio.”  This pun has puzzled art historians for centuries.  Was Caravaggio referring to his young studio assistant (and probable lover), or did he paint a picture of his younger self?

If Caravaggio did indeed paint his younger self as David, this picture becomes even more amazing because Caravaggio modeled the face of Goliath on himself, as well – making this picture of David and Goliath a double-portrait.

The face of Goliath is not that of a monster nor giant, but a dissipated satyr.  The eyes are heavily lidded and puffy, the mouth slack and weak, the teeth rotting, the hair long and unkempt.  But, underneath it all, is there not a resemblance between David and Goliath?

Even more remarkable is the expression of young David’s face.  There is none of the serene self-satisfaction of Donatello, nor the heroic resolution of Michelangelo.  Rather, this David seems mournful as he regretfully holds the head of Goliath into our view.  Could this not be Caravaggio looking regretfully upon his older self?  Or, if as is supposed, this picture was a Papal offering, a promise that the older, monstrous Caravaggio is now dead, eliminated by his own better self?

Caravaggio’s David and Goliath is a puzzle inside of mystery – and one of the most enigmatic works of the Renaissance.